#it's rhizomatic

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Wednesday 22 May 2024

In a shady border under some deciduous trees the Anemone nemorosa 'Robinsoniana' (wood anemone, windflower) was thriving. This rhizomatous herbaceous perennial has beautiful light lavender-blue flowers with silvery backs to the petals. It thrives in a moist but well drained soil.

Jill Raggett

[iphisesque]

everything informs everything my understanding of one thing inevitably alters and feeds into my understanding of everything else. think rhizomatically bitch.

[spacealiencafe]

ive been babying this spider plant for years and I’ve never managed to split it without the cutting dying. meanwhile i have four aloes that i can’t kill no matter how hard i try and they keep putting out shoots

[vapourchild]

me reading the secondary literature for a primary text with whose dead author i have intense one sided beef cheering every time the secondary source author raises an objection to their argument like yeah get that bitch ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[braintasting]

First thoughts on The Last of Us

I've only seen the first four episodes, but I think I've got a handle on what makes THE LAST OF US different from previous zombie fiction. I'm not sure how to string these thoughts together yet, but I want to jot them down to see what patterns emerge (like fruiting bodies from a mycelial network, of course).

* It's firmly lodged in the apocalypse-as-family-dynamic subgenre of zombie films, like the first few seasons of THE WALKING DEAD, 28 WEEKS LATER, and even moreso TRAIN TO BUSAN (previously discussed here).

* Rather than extending out of melodrama like... well, most zombie movies from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD on; lots of repressed anguish, psychological subtext, close-ups on sweaty faces making bad decisions... and rather than borrowing dynamics or settings from war movies like DEAD SNOW, DAY OF THE DEAD, OUTPOST, or the final third of 28 DAYS LATER... this series is pretty consciously taking its cues from Westerns. It's not exactly TRUE GRIT in the zombie apocalypse, but it's close.

* The Western trappings change the deeper themes at play. Westerns are always about remarkable individuals making existential decisions, whereas nearly all zombie movies are about social systems and the breakdown of interpersonal hierarchies. The zombies (or fungally infected) in THE LAST OF US don't seem to travel in herds. It's an epidemic, but in this story, the infected are all networked together. We're told early on that what one perceives, others will react to even over a distance of miles. This isn't a mathematical or statistical model; it's biological. Rhizomatic.

* The design work is outstanding, and unlike nearly every post-apocalyptic fiction I've seen (with the possible exception of STATION ELEVEN) the photography seems to take real joy in life. This isn't THE ROAD WARRIOR as much as it is AFTER MAN. Cars aren't burnt and blackened as much as they are green with moss and weeds. City streets have been reclaimed by wilderness. Of course, this visual choice is a natural extension of a schema in which the infectious agent is a fungus rather than a virus. A virus is a biological machine, not even truly alive. Cordyceps fungus is alive, too alive; it only wants to dominate a brain and an animate creature's neurology in order to reproduce itself. The horror of THE LAST OF US is that everything grows, not that everything breaks down.

* Because it is a family story, and a story about life, the triumph of life over society itself, it is also a love story. The third episode with Nick Offerman is ... well, I won't spoil it, but it's really about emotional life flourishing in the face of a world that is unkind, crude, and dismissive of the value of the individual. That value is developed not just for every person in their own right (in true Western fashion) but also expressed in the value people find in each other. Humans are networked too, only by emotional bonds, not by mycelium. (Of course one of two main characters is a prepper. Who you let into your bunker makes for a great character-shaping tool.)

Looking forward to where this fiction goes next.

[teawiththespleen]

just learnt that the zettelkasten girl on youtube is writing her phd thesis on the human and the non-human in the act of juggling (and extrapolating that to relationships between humanity and non-humanity)

[googledocsdyke]

me vs using the word rhizomatic in every sentence

[beingharsh]

desiring machine, abstract machine, money machine: a schizoanalysis of 100 gec's queer sounscapes & towards potential rupture of hegemonic harmony

[wiregrrrl]

which way western man whos interested in french weirdos

[loud-swearing]

ginger is an honorary deity in my pantheon

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Friday 28 October 2022

The rhizomatous perennial Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) has grey-green leaves that when crushed smell of garlic. In early autumn the pale lavender flowers are produced in a sunny, sheltered location.

Jill Raggett

[chaospel]

The Motorcade

From the icy coffin of our full-blast-air-conditioner car, it was hard to tell that it was blazing hot outside. The molasses parade of cars stretched so impossibly far ahead of us that we'd be forgiven if we couldn't see the herse, such a small dot at the head of the procession. But no, it glowed with such a deep, black, radiant light. "How can't you see it? It is everywhere."

The sky was so clear and burning blue that those first strange clouds rolling whispily in, though stealthy, were a shock to the system when finally spotted. Something like thunder roared. Rain began on the periphery and slowly but surely became all we could see. Sight was sheets and sheets of rain and smeared car headlights for what seemed forever. The sky was a close (too close, really) ceiling of gray (almost black) clouds, roiling uneasily.

I turned the radio on. Maybe to hear a weather report, maybe to hear something other than the rain. I like rain. I love rain. But this rain sounded so wrong. Unnatural hisses and sizzles marked its impacts, and in the cacophony of white noise it produced... could I hear whispers?

"Amelia," said the voice on the radio in such a distant echo, "do not fear."

We could smell just a slight sulfurous smell as the rain began to finally, after what seemed like days, slow its pace. I know it was we because we commiserated about it.

As the inky blanket above us parted, "Really, almost boiling away from the center, wouldn't you agree, Amelia?" said the radio, we were greeted with the Eclipsed Sun.

A pool, a hole of endless black stood in the sky surrounded by eratic, red, electric flames. And the sky purpled like a bruise.

Gripping the wheel tightly, I tried to focus on the road. But there is something in the backseat. There is something I feel so indentified with.

We drove on in silence forever, myself and the thing in the backseat. The Eclipsed Sun blazed with cold heat over everything. Thruming with indecent radiation, the violent inkblot stared at us, at me.

Along the side of the road, the rolling hills gave way suddenly to desert. Cracked earth spread everywhere and strange twisted cacti, like saguaro, but thinner, taller, meaner, blacker stretched into the sky. I could feel them pricking me even inside my car, so removed from their murderous looking needles. I could feel them pricking my mind, stigmatizing my hands and feet. "Get off that cross," sang the radio, "we can use the wood."

The Eclipsed Sun was like a closed eye. And then The Sun behind The Moon flickerd out and the eye opened.

The Moon looked into my soul.

The Moon asked me a question, but I can't repeat it here.

I would not answer.

The Moon asked again.

I could not answer.

The earth began to blacken and crack as those not-saguaros seemed to dig into it. From the cracks billowed a rancid smoke and as the smoke cleared, small, black, thin things began to grow rapidly from the cracks. They grew like vines, but it was soon clear they were more like tentacles.

The endless line of sap-flow that was the procession did not seem to respond, but I was suddenly gripped with an all consuming fear. I knew they were coming for me.

"Give in?" asked the radio while The Moon still stared deep into me and watched for my answer to its own question to bubble to the surface of my boiling insides.

There was nothing for it.

I jerked the wheel suddenly to the side and the car went barreling through the charred landscape. The black tentacle things matched my increased velocity, an ocean of spindly, slimy worms now following me as if magnetized. I swerved to avoid hitting a not-saguaro. The front driver's side tire thumped on a rock and I lost the wheel just for a moment, braked hard in panic, and then the ink trails came pouring on to the car. I floored it, and the car was doing doughnuts on the cracked, black earth. This did manage to break the tentacles hold. I began to speed away, not letting up on the gas even a little.

"And time goes by," sang the radio, "so slowly."

As my mind came back to me from the world of adrenal thumping in my temple, I could see that I had lost the tenatcles. I began to let off the gas. The desert was giving way to chaparral, yet it was still a bit more blackened looking than one might like. I came to rest at the gently sloping end of a large cuesta. At the top I could see a knobby, bare tree whose branches made a great thorny canopy over the peak. The Moon still asked its question, still squirmed through my guts looking for my reply. The radio said, "weeeooookrrrrrrkkssss."

I unbuckled and exited the car. The Moon The Moon The Moon still asking still asking still asking. I went to the back driver's side door and pulled the box from the seat. All this time it had felt so heavy in the backseat, but when I lifted it, it was so light, like nothing.

I climbed the soft slope the the tune of The questioning Moon. In the shadow of the knobby tree I found the hole already dug, a shovel in the mound of dirt by its side.

I looked out over the cliffside at the vast, rocky terrain below. In this crater, lay the endless body of a Dead God, it's many eyes glassy and blank, but clearly oriented in a stare toward The Moon. The question of The Moon had eaten away at parts, and preserved others. Oh to stay there and study the Dead God, to unravel its mysteries. The temptation, I'm sure, of anyone who stood where I am standing now. And which would be better? To live here in infinite archeology, scholarship of The Remains? To become a physician and attempt resuscitation? To leave this place and never return; never speak of the Unspeakable scene again?

I looked back toward the procession. It was such a thin line from this vantage, but endless. In each direction its extent was endless. No begining or end could be glimpsed, even from these heights. I looked back to the Dead God.

"I cannot burry the God," I thought, "but I can burry this." And looked to the box in my hands.

As I placed the box in the hole, I felt that weight I had felt in the backseat again for just a moment. Not a weight that would cause me to drop the box, but one that would cause it to fall into me endlessly.

I let it go.

It took a long time to burry the box. I was exhausted and the dirt was hard. And I was not as eager to be done as I might like. I was not so eager to live in the world without the box.

When I finally finished, I began to walk back to the car, and The Moon resumed its interrogation. I slid into the driver's seat and turned the key.

The radio said:

"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special report. Life is endless, but lives are not. To everything is a season and ours is the season of Sisyphus. But even Sisyphus is a story and stories move in finite circles."

I drove slowly through the charred landscape and saw that little tufts of dry grasses had begun to poke their way out through the seams of the earth. For a moment I thought I perceived their connections below, the rhizome spead throughout everything I could see or imagine. I wondered what this meant to the question of The Moon. For the first time in eternity, I smiled.

When I arrived again at the procession, I waited patiently. It did not take long to be let back in. This was a movement toward equilibrium, after all.

The procession moved imperceptibly, and my car along with it, A Glow still overhead, questioning.

I looked up and watched The Moon.

visit Psychic Cartoons for more like this

[paaopalpoerepr33]

I went into this shit for answers and part of the hierarchical climbing is the expectation of taking a side and building expertise on it and boy. What I’ve found instead is I’m lost in a deep web and I’m afraid for anyone to touch me/it for fear of pushing me too far one way ( the way [redacted] did which I can’t be entirely upset about as it gave me grounding in one area VAGUELY at least for an undergrad) while I stand here in the mire with my little waders on like 🤔🧐🤨😮‍💨

[light-angelic]

Something You Should Know About Vortex Healing

Healing vortex stress-free therapists are the best to help people suffering from stress and anxiety problems. https://lightangelic.com/something-you-should-know-about-vortex-healing/

[generatedart]

Art by @palmdrop . . . . . . . . . . #generative #generativeart #computerart#threejs #creativecoding #digitalart #codeart #procedural #proceduralart #genart #genartclub #domainwarping #perlinnoise #recursive #spacefilling #rhizome #rhizomatic #glitch #glitchart #dataart #terrain #alien #plant #geneticalgorithm #newmediaart #website #webgl #glsl #biophilia https://www.instagram.com/p/CqDVBNUj7e2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[paragnatekar]

Organism…acrylic on paper. . . #organism #symbiosis #nature #life #rhizome #rhizomatic #biology #connectedness #art #contemporaryart #artcurators #artwork #artcollector https://www.instagram.com/p/CoU8pfPP7K6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=